By Seamus Hayes

Days like this are what dreams are made of, a delighted Clare captain Pat Donnellan said shortly after lifting the McCarthy cup on the steps of the Hogan stand following Clare’s magnificent victory.

“Going up the steps of the Hogan stand there was absolutely unreal. this is what you think about when you are a young fella. This is just reward for the amount of effort these fellas have put in all year. They deserved to get their day in the sun and we had it today”, the O’Callaghans Mills clubman commented.

Asked if he was worried at any stage in the game, he said “you don’t get worried but you are conscious that you must answer what they are doing. We did that today and score for score we tried to answer them as much as possible. when they drew level, we kicked on again”.

“Cork are a class team and they were never going to say it was over. All we had to do was to keep our heads down and everytime the got a score, we came back and didn’t let them pull away”, the Clare captain said.

“We were all trying to do our best out there, get on the ball, make a block down, whatever. It’s about doing your best and it all adds up in the end. The feeling at the end was unreal, the dream has come true. It was surreal to climb the steps at the end. Hopefully it will happen again soon enough for this bunch. the young lads have shown us the way to a certain degree. It’s brilliant for the county”, the skipper concluded.